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It's intriguing to fathom the long long journey of human history. "Guns, Germs, and Steel" offers me the answers. It demonstrates us the timeline of historical developements on the different continents since 11,000 B.C. I am extremely curious about the Great Leap Forward happened 50,000 years ago. Which kind of power drove the great leap? Who was in charge of the evolution then? It was an amazing transformation. Then the author tells us a story of collision at Cajamarca and concludes that it's the Guns, Germs, and Steel that cause Spain's conquering Inca.
The book analyzes the rise and spread of food prodution. It tells us how the ancestors domecticated wild plants and animals. "Fertile Crescent”is one of the nuclear areas. It explains why Fertile Crescent became the cradleland of human civilization.

Part one From Eden to Cajamarca
1 Up to the starting line:
historical developements on the different continents around 11,000 B.C.
beginnings of village life, the first peopling of the Americas, the end of the Pleistocene Era and last Ice Age
Recent Era.
our closest relatives: the gorilla, the common chimpanzee, the pygmy chimpanzee
7m years ago, the earliest stages of human evolution, African apes evolved into humans
4m years ago, upright posture    
2.5m years ago, increase in body and brain size, stone tools
1.7m years ago, Homo erectus, the first human ancestor to spread beyond Africa, Java man
0.5m years ago, Homo sapiens, similar skulls, bone tools, no art
40k years and 130k years ago, Homo neanderthalensis, similar to modern skeletons
50k years ago, Great Leap Forward, Cro-Magnons, complicated tools, weapons, artworks, the first extension of human geographic range, Austrilia etc.
14k and 35k years ago, the Americas were first colonized.
2 A natural experiment of history
Polynesia furnishes us with a convincing example of environmentally related diversification of human societies in operation.
3 Collision at Cajamarca
the first encouter between the Inca emperor Atahuallpa and the Spanish conquistador Fransico Pizarro on November 16, 1532.
military technology based on guns, steel weapons, and horses; infectious diseases endemic in Eurasia; European maritime technology; the centralized political organization of European states; writing.

Part 2 The Rise and Spread of Food Production
4 Farmer Power
Plant and animal domestication meant much more food and hence much denser human populations. The availability of domestic plants and animals explains why empires, literacy, and steel weapons developed earliest in Eurasia.
5 History's haves and have-nots
the geographic differences in the times and modes of onset of food production
6 To farm or not to farm
the replacement of hunter-gatherers by farmers
7 How to make an almond
crop development by artificial selection
8 Apples or Indians
the reason Native Americans did not domesticate apples lay with the entire suite of wild plant and animal species available to Native Americans
9 Zebras, unhappy marriges, and the Anna Karenina principle
Only a small percentage of wild mammal species ended up in happy marriages with humans.
10 Spacious skies and tilted axes
the orientation of Eurasia's axis compared with that of Americas and Africa.